The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Today, a wide variety of electronic devices, such as mobile phones, desktop and portable computers, car navigation systems, hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) units, etc. support software applications that display interactive digital maps. Depending on the software application and/or user preferences, digital maps may display a variety of map content, such as topographical data, street and road data, urban transit information, traffic data, weather data, etc. Some software applications also receive geographic or navigation queries from users, such as requests to search for coffee shops in a certain area or requests for directions from a current location to a particular coffee shop, and display search results on the digital map.
To personalize or customize map content, such as navigation routes, information regarding points of interest, advertisements, etc., some providers of map content attempt to gather and store data related to specific clients (e.g. client locations, client usage history, etc.). Gathering and storing individual user's data raises privacy concerns that should be addressed.